Strays review – tedious enough to make you hate dogs

As a film crit­ic gets old­er, per­haps it’s inevitable that you begin to look at the film releas­es of your youth with rose-tint­ed glass­es on, lament­ing that the gen­er­al stan­dard of cin­e­ma was stronger when you were a wee’un. Increas­ing­ly I find myself like Prin­ci­pal Skin­ner, befud­dled by the lat­est viral craze or music that, to my age­ing ears, is noth­ing but noise. 

Yet when it comes to the dimin­ish­ing returns on offer at the Hol­ly­wood Stu­dio Com­e­dy Fac­to­ry, I feel con­fi­dent to say that actu­al­ly, yes – things were bet­ter when I was a teenag­er. While the likes of Step Broth­ers, Blades of Glo­ry and Hot Rod might have been puerile, at least there was some indi­ca­tion that some time and effort had gone into mak­ing them. The same can­not be said for Strays, a film so deriv­a­tive and tedious one pities the poor dogs who suf­fered through the indig­ni­ty of film­ing it.

Chip­per ter­ri­er Reg­gie (Will Fer­rell, doing his Elf voice) lives with his unpleas­ant own­er Doug (Will Forte) who kept him out of spite dur­ing a break-up with his girl­friend. Doug resents Reggie’s exis­tence, while eter­nal­ly pos­i­tive Reg­gie assumes his abu­sive behav­iour is just a game. After being dumped in the big city, Reg­gie is befriend­ed by a tough-talk­ing Boston Ter­ri­er named Bug (Jamie Foxx) who helps him realise that Doug was a ter­ri­ble own­er. Reg­gie swears revenge on Doug, and bands togeth­er with Bug, Mag­gie the Aus­tralian Shep­herd (Isla Fish­er) and Hunter the Great Dane (Ran­dall Park) to get his own back.

It’s a clear riff on Dis­ney clas­sic Home­ward Bound: The Incred­i­ble Jour­ney (itself a remake of 1963’s The Incred­i­ble Jour­ney, in turn, an adap­ta­tion of Sheila Burnford’s nov­el), in which two dogs and a cat tra­versed the wilder­ness to reunite with their beloved own­ers – Reg­gie and co even stop to save a small child in the same man­ner as their cin­e­mat­ic cousins. But while those lost pets had the per­ils of the wilder­ness to con­tend with, Strays screen­writer Dan Per­rault opts for small­er stakes in the form of a mush­room trip and minor bun­ny mas­sacre. The 93-minute run­time is most­ly padded out by a pletho­ra of jokes about dicks and bod­i­ly flu­ids which might amuse a group of nine-year-old boys, but is unlike­ly to impress any­one whose pre­frontal cor­tex has ful­ly formed.

While the film boasts some star pow­er in its vocal tal­ent, their per­for­mances are deliv­ered with almost inspir­ing lev­els of half-heart­ed­ness, and the on-screen humans are restrict­ed to Will Forte’s odi­ous cur­mud­geon and a brief Den­nis Quaid cameo (play­ing him­self in a nod to his appear­ance in the baf­fling­ly suc­cess­ful A Dog’s Pur­pose). One must look instead to the ani­mal cast, who are all quite cute and charm­ing as they per­form nifty tricks. The CGI that makes them appear to be talk­ing is a lit­tle ropey, but it’s hard­ly the worst offence in the sub­genre (and if you’ve seen as many talk­ing dog films as I have, you know how bad things can get). It’s just a shame that none of the dogs are say­ing any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly fun­ny or interesting.

It’s strange that Strays is quite so lazi­ly con­ceived and exe­cut­ed, since Per­rault is the writer behind hit Net­flix mock­u­men­tary Amer­i­can Van­dal, and direc­tor Josh Greenbaum’s debut Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar was a delight. But is there real­ly noth­ing else that Hol­ly­wood has to say about the canine/​human rela­tion­ship beyond scat­o­log­i­cal humour and point­ing out that dogs like to have sex with soft fur­nish­ings? Do we think so lit­tle of man’s best friend? For­get scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel – the bar­rel is no more. This is what­ev­er has been fished from beneath it by a snuf­fling wet nose, chomped down, and prompt­ly shat out on the car­pet of cin­e­ma. Ruff stuff indeed.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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